Micko favourite quotes (page 6) | Quotes of famous people

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Often misattributed to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Source: As quoted from “Interview with an Immoral,” Arthur Gordon, Reader’s Digest (July 1959). Reprinted in the Kipling Society journal, “Six Hours with Rudyard Kipling”, Vol. XXXIV. No. 162 (June, 1967) pp. 5-8. Interview took place in June, 1935 https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/pdf/KJ162.pdf
Context: Looking back, I think he knew that in my innocence I was eager to love everything and please everybody, and he was trying to warn me not to lose my own identity in the process. Time after time he came back to this theme. " The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Attributed to Goethe by popular British novelist Marie Corelli in her essay "The Spirit of Work" as published in The Queen's Christmas carol : an anthology of poems, stories, essays, drawings and music / by British authors, artists and composers in 1905 by The Daily Mail of London.
Attributed to Goethe by William Hutchinson Murray, in his book The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951), this has been shown to be a misattribution at "German Myth 12: The Famous 'Goethe' Quotation", Answer.com http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth12.htm and "Popular Quotes: Commitment", Goethe Society of North America http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html
Misattributed
Variant: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Correspondence, Letters to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie
Variant: Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.
Context: Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live. (June 1857)

“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success”

Ian Fleming (1908–1964) English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer

“No talent, but a character.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Atta Troll, ch. 24 (1843)

“One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.”

Henry Miller book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Variant: Often misquoted as "One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things".
Source: Miller, H. (1957). Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the [person] in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

“Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One
Context: Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.

“To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17
Context: To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.

“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“Art is a substitute for violence.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Power and Innocence (1972), Ch. 11 : The Humanity of the Rebel
Context: Art is a substitute for violence. The same impulses that drive persons to violence — the hunger for meaning, the need for ecstasy, the impulse to risk all — drive the artist to create. He is by nature our archrebel. … the essence of the rebellion is in the new way of seeing nature and life.